Growing up in fear: Immigration enforcement fuels mental health crisis among children of immigrants

As 16-year-old Lily Martinez was heading home from her job at the local hospital this summer, her mother called urgently and told her not to come home, instructing her to go to a friend’s house instead.

“She told me that ICE was outside, and it was just her and my brother at home. She didn’t want to open the door for anyone,” Martinez said. “I didn’t know what to do, and I was really scared at that moment.” 

Martinez and her brother were born and raised in Queens, New York. Her parents are undocumented immigrants from Mexico who have lived in the U.S. for two decades. Earlier this year, her uncle in Texas was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while driving and deported to Mexico. She’s afraid this could happen to her parents too. 

“Sometimes I get so anxious that I’m distracted even when I’m with my friends,” she said.

Millions of U.S.-born children live in “mixed-status” households, families in which at least one member is undocumented or under threat of deportation. Though these children are citizens, the fear that they will lose their parents and caregivers defines their daily lives and has profound consequences for mental health.

“You can’t not consider the issue of immigration as a child well-being issue,” said Mayra E. Alvarez, the president of The Children’s Partnership, a California-based advocacy organization.

In California, nearly half of all children have at least one immigrant parent. Nationwide, it’s 1 in 4. Yet children’s mental health often remains invisible in policy debates framing immigration as a security issue rather than one of public health.

In February, 11-year-old Jocelynn Rojo Carranza, a U.S. citizen from Gainesville, Texas, died by suicide after enduring persistent bullying that included threats of immigration enforcement against her family. In interviews, her mother said classmates told her that the family would be reported to ICE, leaving her “all alone.” The case became a flashpoint for how aggressive enforcement rhetoric and peer hostility around immigration can dramatically elevate risk for children living in mixed-status families.

Researchers studying 547 U.S.-born adolescents found that having a detained or deported family member was associated with higher risks of suicidal ideation, externalizing behaviors, and alcohol use. The report, published in July in Psychiatric News, found that even the persistent threat of family separation generates toxic stress, affecting memory, emotion regulation, and impulse control into adulthood.

Claudia Santos, 17, from Santa Maria, California, has experienced similar fears. Her parents are undocumented strawberry farmworkers, and she worries they could be picked up and deported like so many in her community.

“In middle school, I had suicidal thoughts. But I always thought about what that would do to my parents and my little sisters,” Santos said.

The landscape has grown more perilous under the second Trump administration. Earlier this year, the president signed a budget reconciliation bill that allocated $145 billion toward immigration enforcement and border security. According to recent data released by ICE, over half a million people have been deported. Children are witnessing their parents and caregivers being arrested from places considered safe, such as schools, hospitals, and places of worship. 

Experts and advocates say that children are showing visible signs of stress.

“I have parents asking for support from their little ones,” said Dr. Sandra Espinoza, an associate professor at Alliant International University in Los Angeles and a psychiatrist working with Latinx immigrant communities. “Children bite their nails, they are scared at night.” 

That fear ripples across entire communities, affecting everyday activities, including even leaving the homes. Leisy Abrego, a sociologist and professor of Chicana/o and Central American Studies at UCLA, recalled that graduation last academic year was missing the usual scores of immigrant families.

“It’s always standing-room only. This time, there were empty rows,” Abrego said. “Imagine what is happening as children are observing this.”

Children of undocumented Latinx parents in the U.S. are at greater risk for long-term mental health struggles, especially when a parent is suddenly taken away, according to Espinoza’s co-authored 2024 study in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy. Researchers found that many of these children grow up carrying invisible scars—feelings of loss, mistrust, fear of separation, and shame—that often resurface later in life, especially in their closest relationships. 

Although the research is still sparse, it’s beginning to show that the fear children carry growing up with an undocumented parent doesn’t simply fade away once they become adults. One 2021 national study of nearly 1,800 U.S.-born Latinx adults found that those who had a parent deported during childhood had more than twice the odds of exhibiting post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms years later. Experiences such as a loved one being deported, living with the constant fear that a parent could be taken, or witnessing an immigration raid were all linked to adult PTSD.

“A child can learn to think, ‘My caregiver, who was the most safe person in my world, was taken from me. And so I’m going to adapt by not trusting people anymore or by not getting close to people anymore,’” Espinoza said.

Pregnant people under constant fear of deportation also show higher levels of cortisol, stress hormones that can affect fetal development. “These are babies pulling their hair out, babies with stomach aches,” Alvarez said, referring to research conducted by The Children’s Partnership. “It starts that early.”

Chronic stress impairs the immune system, delays cognitive development, and increases vulnerability to mental illness. For children of immigrants, stress may also begin with the trauma carried over from their home countries and can involve poverty, war, or political persecution. It then continues through the instability of U.S. immigration enforcement. This intergenerational trauma echoes through families, as parents struggling with depression or post-traumatic stress may become emotionally unavailable.

If [parents] are living in a constant state of hypervigilance caused by a broken legal and political system, it’s going to be difficult to be fully present with your child. That’s not the parent’s fault. It’s the environment’s fault.

Sandra Espinoza, psychiatrist and associate professor at Alliant International University

“Even when parents are present,” Espinoza said, “if they’re living in a constant state of hypervigilance caused by a broken legal and political system, it’s going to be difficult to be fully present with your child. That’s not the parent’s fault. It’s the environment’s fault.”

For Woojung Park, a 26-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient from South Korea, that environment has felt like a lifelong sentence.

As the only member of her family without permanent legal status—her parents now have green cards and her younger sister is a citizen—Park has lived with a constant sense of isolation.

“It’s like carrying a dirty secret,” Park said. “When I found out we’d overstayed our visa, my mom told me not to tell anyone. … I felt deceived by her. It took years to rebuild that trust.” 

Park was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and ADHD as a teenager. “I don’t know if being undocumented correlates to it, but it probably was a factor because there’s so much anxiety that comes with it.”

Herlin Soto Matute, 28, a Nicaraguan-born immigrant, grew up in northern California in a mixed-status family. While her two younger sisters are U.S. citizens, Matute and her parents received Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which offers temporary legal protection to immigrants from countries facing war, natural disasters, or political instability. 

TPS allowed Matute and her parents to live and work in the U.S. without fear of deportation—but only for as long as the program is renewed. Under Donald Trump’s first term, the administration tried to end TPS protections for thousands of recipients, but federal courts ultimately delayed those terminations. When Trump returned to office this year, his administration again began rolling back protections. For families like Matute’s, it felt like a cycle of dread repeating itself, keeping her up at night.

“It has been not only about mental and emotional state, but how do these systems have everything to do with how you view yourself, how you behave, how you respond, your psychological state, your physical symptoms?” she said. “Everything is intertwined with every person in power, all of those systems together make our identity.”

Motivated by those experiences, Matute pursued a doctorate in psychology and now works to support Latinx and immigrant communities through her private practice. Still, the precarity of TPS continues to shape her life. Her parents have grown tired and are accepting of the idea of being deported.

For Martinez, who is a high school senior, the future looks different from what she once imagined. She always wanted to leave New York for college and live on her own in a dorm.

“But now I don’t really want to do that anymore,” she said. “With everything that’s been going on, I feel like I can be of some use here at home.”

The fear of losing loved ones also extends far beyond undocumented communities. Across the country, refugee families are feeling the same collective anxiety that undocumented families have long endured. More than 90,000 Bhutanese people in the U.S.—most of them from a Nepali-speaking minority who were resettled after fleeing ethnic cleansing and surviving years in refugee camps since 2008—now find themselves facing a new wave of fear. Since March, ICE has arrested at least 60 Bhutanese in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, and other states, deporting 27 of them. Most are still missing, unreachable to their families.

“We were very much caught off guard,” said Angel Bista, a 26-year-old Nepali-speaking interpreter and community advocate in Michigan.

Advocates say children raised in such environments don’t easily outgrow that fear. 

“No matter how good a therapist I am, no intervention in the world is going to make these real problems disappear,” Espinoza said. “Until we have true immigration reform, are my clients ever really going to be able to rest?”